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Brief Summary Of Nickel And Dimed By Barbara Ehrenreich

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Summary of Nickel and Dimed And how it relates to Macroeconomics This paper will discuss the book Nickel and Dimed. The book is based on the real life experiences of Barbara Ehrenreich who is the protagonist in the book. The plot of the book is following the story of Barbara as she decides to do a personal experiment. She decided to see if someone can survive on a low income level based job. So basically she wants to experience if poverty is truly a reality. To start off her experiment. she decided to set some limitations on herself. The first limitation was that she cannot fall back on any skills learned throughout her education or usual work. which throughout the book it seems that was not really the case. The second limitation she …show more content…

she also made three important rules that in reality made her experiment unfair. The first rule was that she would always have a car. which is not really fair considering the aim of her experiment. Most people living in poverty do not have the luxury of owning a car. The second rule was that she would never allow herself to become homeless. That is also unfair due to the fact that she did not actually start with nothing; she had some money in the bank that she could use in times of need. which proves the point that she had an advantage and did not actually start out on the low end of the economic scale. The third rule was that she promised herself that she would never go …show more content…

Barbara had an advantage throughout her experience. As mentioned in the very first paragraph. one of the limitations she put on herself was that she would not fall back on any of the skills learned throughout her education or her regular job. But as seen throughout the book. she used some of those skills throughout her experience without realizing it herself. For example the ways to manage her money. and how to look for jobs and having a greater rate of hire then someone without a proper education would. Also as mentioned above she had money in the bank she could fall back onto if she had a problem. which created a safety net for her. But most people living in poverty do not have the luxury of having a safety net. So to say the least. she did not start out with zero. But that does not mean that she did not experience most of the hardships that come with having low paying jobs and having to keep up with all of the necessary expenses that are necessary to

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